Judging Sprout

So the social media population just keep growing in 2008. Just announced today, Mashable has offered a limited number of invitations to sample Sprout’s beta site. I was one of the lucky few to snatch them up and it took a little bit to figure out what it was, but after a little bit, I think it’s a really cool idea. It’s interesting that this site comes to beta status now. Just last weekend I was at WidgetDevCamp hosted at Blattner Brunner and a bunch of developers came by and shared their thoughts about how to go about and build a widget for different applications, whether it’s on Facebook, Myspace, mobile phones, or even blogs. And so this great idea is released and I think this will give a helping hand to those folks who aren’t necessarily developers, but are idealists that want to create something that’ll be crucial to their business and something they can market.

If I had to bank on a website being one of the top sites out there for those folks in social media, I would have to give it to Sprout. Your company might be wanting to develop a widget for sites or blogs and have them be viral – especially those political sites, but no matter what your product is, you’ll be able to develop your own widget on the fly, then export it and send it to sites like Clearspring and complete the transformation. If you’re lucky enough to snag an invitation to their beta testing, I highly recommend trying it out. Happy developing. Let’s see those widgets out in the world!